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The 

ROMANISING 
MOVEMENT 

in the Church of England 



BY 

CHARLES A. SALMOND, D.D. 

EDINBURGH 

Author of ''The Religious Question in France," etc. 



LONDON 

PROTESTANT TRUTH SOCIETY 

3 & 4 ST PAULAS CHURCHYARD, E.C.4 
1917 ! . 



PRICE THREEPENCE 



WAR TIME PUBLICATIONS 



The following Publications are specially recommended 
to Readers of this Pamphlets— 



BABYLON: THE SCARLET WOMAN, or THE DIVINE FOREVIEW OF 

THE CHURCH OF ROME. By Albert Close 

HAND OF GOD AND SATAN IN MODERN HISTORY. By Albert Close 
THE GREAT HARLOT ON THE SEVEN HILLS. By Albert Close 

GOD'S GREAT CYPHER BOOK. By J. Franck. Complete Commentary on 

Revelation, with Beacon Warnings for the Times 
GOD'S WORD SUPREME. By Rev. A. H. Carter. Overthrowing the 

destructive methods of German Higher Critics 

ROME AND THE WAR. By "Watchman 

ROME AND GERMANY. By *' Watchman " 

REVOLUTION AND WAR. By " Vichlant." Showing the secret work of Jesuits 

in Britain 
CAPTIVE TO AN ALIEN POWER. By Nora E. Elwood. A Protestant story ... 
DEFEAT OF SPANISH ARMADA. By Albert Close. Paper 7cI. ; Cloth ... 

MIRACLES IN FRANCE. By Rev. S. Levermore 

JOHN BULL'S WOOING. A remarkable Allegory 

THE DIVINE PROGRAMME: SUGGESTIONS FOR ITS STUDY. By 

Canon Girdles tone, M.A. ... 

ROME, TURKEY, AND JERUSALEM. By Canon Hoare 

THE PURPOSES OF GOD. By Samuel Gakratt 

OMINOUS DAYS! or THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES. By Rev. E. L. Langston 

HISTORY IN PROPHECY. P>y Rev. William Baillie 

THE FIRST TWO VISIONS OF DANIEL. By Rev. E. P. Cachemaille 

WHEN WILL OUR LORD RETURN? By H. Nokkis 

CHRIST AND THE APOSTATE CHURCH. By Rev. E. L. Langston 
ARMAGEDDON, or THE LAST WAR. By Rev. C. H. Titterton 

ROME AND TREASON. By Rev. Sidney Harris 

POPE i^ersus KING. By Rev. Sidney Harris 

THE IMMINENCE OF THE SECOND ADVENT: The Anti-Christ and 

the Wa.r. By Commanutr B. H. Key, R.N, 

ROME'S BID FOR TEMPORAL POWER. By Ernest Phillii ps 

THE POWER BEHIND THE SCENES IN THE GREAT WAR. By Rev. 

Robert Middleton 

THE REAL POWER BEHIND THE WAR. By G. E. A. Watling 

THE BRITISH ENVOY TO THE VATICAN. By Michael McCarthy 

THIS WAR AND PROPHECY. By Rev. Hubert Brooke, M.A 

OUR DELAYED VICTORY AND NATIONAL APOSTASY. By H. H. Martin 
WAYSIDE CRUCIFIXES AND WAR SHRINES 



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PROTESTANT TRUTH SOCIETY 

••• 

3 & 4 ST PAUL'S CHURCHYARD, LONDON, E.C.4 






THE ROMANISING MOVEMENT 
IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

There can be no doubt that the so-called " Catholic 
Kevival " bas. made remarkable progress in Great Britain 
during tbe last hundred years. 

The Progress of Avowed Romanism in Britain 

It has done so in connection with the Roman Church 
itself. The lowest ebb of Ufe in that communion, as we are 
told in Cardinal Wiseman's biography, was reached about 
the year 1770, when, following on the catastrophe of 1745, 
the Papal party in England had to own itself not only 
beaten, but almost annihilated. The very name Mass 
was spoken as a forbidden word, and the celebration of it 
was for a time a furtive hidden function. But toward 
the end of the eighteenth century a body called the Catholic 
Committee came into existence ; and, acting on the lati- 
tudinarianism of the time, as well as making adroit appeal 
to the spirit of toleration which possessed the breasts of 
many fair-minded EngUshmen, it set itself to gain concession 
after concession, culminating in the Roman CathoUc 
ReUef Act of 1829. It need not be said here that— Mr 
Gladstone being witness — " the penal laws against Roman 
CathoUcs were repealed on the faith of assurances which 
have not been fulfilled." Nor can we stay to remark how 
astutely Rome has availed herself of the vantage ground 
then gained for the further prosecution of her designs. 
Not content with toleration, she soon began to demand 
privilege. Professing only a longing for equaUty before, 
she now directly sought ascendancy. And if all the hopes 
and ambitions indicated in the haughty letter from the 
Flaminian Gate, when " the Papal aggression " was ushered 
in, have not been realised, there can be no doubt that 



2 The Romanising Movement 

avowed Eomanism has made a wonderful advance in Great 
Britain since the middle of last century— not so much in 
numbers as in political power and social prestige. 

Papal Statistics 

At the same time, the numerical " progress " in the actual 
Roman Cathohc fold has not, taken by itself, been, even on 
Papal showing, alarmingly great. There have been, no 
doubt, some loudly trumpeted perversions to Rome, but 
there have also been some conversions from Rome, about 
which less is heard. 

According to the Protestant Press Bureau, the agents 
and machinery of Romanism in Britain have largely in- 
creased. Of priests, as against 958 in 1851, there were 
3235 in 1899, and 4477 in 1916 ; of churches, chapels, 
stations, at the same dates, 683, 1854, and 2357 respec- 
tively ; of rehgious houses for men, 17, 260, and 339 ; of 
reUgious houses for women, 53, 557, and 897 (contain- 
ing 10,777 nuns). According to the official " Cathohc 
Directory " for 1916, the Roman Catholic population of 
England and Wales is 1,885,655, as against the 1,891,006 
it announced in 1915,^ and the 2,100,446 claimed by 
it in 1914. This seems rather Hibernian "progress" 
— downward ; and it may be partly attributable to Irish 
emigration to America. We can, in the circumstances, 
forgive that leading Papal organ, the Tablet, for plead- 
ing that an estimate of this kind, " though made with 
every care, is full of uncertainties.''' The ways of Romish 
statisticians are, indeed, so wonderful as to be past finding 
out. For, though Cardinal Manning and Mr Gladstone 
were modestly agreed that the Roman Catholic population 
throughout the world numbers about 200 millions, the 
"Catholic Directory" for 1917 claims more than 300 
milhons — or, to be exact, 301,505,940 ! A certain Bishop 
Foley, again, is reported to have claimed 400 milhons ! 
So the snowball grows ; so the men in buckram ostensibly 
increase. Yet, as regards our country, Cardinal Manning — 
computing the Roman Cathohc population of England and 
Wales at 1| milhons, of whom 1 million were Irish, and 
300,000 were foreigners — was constrained to admit — " We 



in the Church oj England 3 

have lost England ! " And we know how fervently he 
urged his co-rehgionists to strain every nerve to conquer 
" the centre of Protestantism," and to subdue to Rome's 
bidding this " Imperial race." 

Papal Hopes 

But the consolation of Rome is, that there is a great 
leavening process going on in the Church of England ; and 
it is undoubtedly here, in the Church which was once 
counted the chief stronghold of evangeUcal Christianity, 
that there is greatest reason for anxiety, because it is in 
the Church of England that, beyond question, the so-called 
" CathoUc Revival " has been making most menacing 
progress. 

The late Lord Roberts was latterly ridiculed as "an old 
fogey "—by many who have had recently to confess that 
he was right — because he uttered warnings against the 
" peacehil penetration " by Germany. Those who utter 
warnings against the " peaceful penetration " by a yet 
subtler Power, with a network of Jesuit espionage and 
intrigue at its back, may be also decried as " old fogeys " 
and fanatics. But time will show. " Nous verrons — ce 
que nous verrons.''' Rome's hopes often have outrun her 
achievements : her statistics have often left truth far 
behind. But, though faint, she still is pursuing ; though 
toiUng, she still keeps on rowing. And she is especially 
cheered by the knowledge that within the Anghcan pale 
she has a growing body of zealous coadjutors, who, as one 
of her prelates has exultantly said, " are doing our work 
for us." 

I. HISTORY OF THE ROMANISING MOVEMENT 
IN MODERN ENGLAND 

Let us look, to begin with, at the Romanising Movement 
in recent and contemporary history. Then we shall 
examine its doctrinal import and consequences. 

The Oxford Coterie of 1833 

It was in 1833 that the Oxford coterie, consisting of 
Keble, Froude^ Newman, Palmer, and the rest, published 



4 The Romanising Movement 

their Christian Manual, and began the issue of the famous 
Tracts from which the Tractarian party got its current 
name. We know the direction which this movement more 
and more palpably took, and the shock that was given 
to the conscience of England when, as the outcome of the 
dissimulating poUcy of years, Newman and others actually 
crossed the Tiber in 1845. And yet it would have been 
well for England to-day if the secessions to Rome in the 
forties had been far more numerous than they were ; for 
not a few remained behind who had much better have 
gone to their own place then. The force of early attach- 
ment held some of them back ; a hngering antipathy at 
certain points to the Romish system had influence with 
others ; and the fear of personal loss, through social 
estrangement and otherwise, doubtless told with others 
still. But with some the crowning consideration was, 
that in the interests of CathoUcism itself it was immeasur- 
ably less desirable to have isolated secessions to Rome 
multipUed, than to have the Church of England leavened 
as a whole, and prepared as a Church for " the Reunion of 
Christendom." 

The remanent section of the Tractarian party, associated 
chiefly with the name of Pusey, was cautious and tentative 
for a time. Little stress was laid for a while upon externals. 
The great object was, quietly to imbue the minds of 
Enghshmen with ** CathoUc teaching " ; and the Puseyites 
even made a merit of abstaining from ceremonial innovations. 



Lord John Russell's '' Durham Letter " 

But, in spite of the economy of the Puseyite tacticians, 
their poUcy did not escape attention ; and as early as 1850 
we find Lord John Russell, who was then Prime Minister, 
saying :— 

" Clergymen of our own Church, who have subscribed the 
Thirty-nine Articles, have been the most forward in leading 
their flocks step by step to the very verge of the precipice. The 
honour paid to saints, the daim of infallibility for the Church, 
the superstitious use of the sign of the cross, the muttering of 
the Liturgy so as to disguise the language in which it is written, 



in the Church of England 5 

the recommendation of auricular confession, and the adminis- 
tration of penance and absolution — all these things are pointed 
out by clergymen of the Church of England as worthy of 
adoption. ^^ 

Romanising Persistency 

But, notwithstanding the firm protest uttered in this 
genuinely Protestant Durham letter, the Eomanising work 
went on ; and by 1866 the Anglo-Catholic party felt 
themselves strong enough to venture into the light. The 
light they chose, however, was unhappily that of greasy 
Roman candles. For at that time, suddenly, as if by 
magic, but by carefully prearranged machinery, there 
appeared simultaneously in quite a number of the churches 
where *^ Cathohc " teaching had been enjoyed, " altar hghts, 
vestments, incense, genuflexions, elevation of the elements, 
prostration, and all the outward acts and ceremonies ex- 
pressive of behef in the actual personal objective presence 
of Christ Himself upon the altar." Are we to take comfort 
from the thought that Romew^ard secessions were not 
afterwards so numerous as they had been before ? No ; 
for large-minded '^ Catholic" souls had now the assurance 
that they need not go to Rome. For had they not at least 
the earnest that Rome was being brought to them ? 

Of course the movement led to expostulation, and even 
in some cases to prosecution. But it continued to spread ; 
and although, through the action of the Earl of Shaftes- 
bury and others, a Royal Commission of Enquiry was 
appointed, no real check was put upon its progress. 

The Public Worship Regulation Act 

So little apparent efiect had the Act of Uniformity 
Amendment Act of 1872 that in the following year a huge 
petition was presented to the EngUsh Archbishops, praying 
them to take steps for restraining Rituahstic practices. 
The Archbishops of that time (Tait and Thomson) were 
men of outspoken Protestant sentiment, and accordingly, 
in 1874, at the instance of the Primate, a Bill with this 
end in view was adopted by the Government of the day. 



6 "The Romanising Movement 

It had the strenuous support, among others, of Sir WilUam 
Harcourt, and, though opposed by Mr Gladstone in a series 
of six resolutions, it was passed into law, under the name 
of The Pubhc Worship Regulation Act. Owing to the 
right of veto vested in the bishops, the cost of prosecution, 
and similar causes, this Act has unhappily been to a large 
extent a dead letter. Its provisions have been ignored 
with increasing temerity by the RituaUstic party, who 
have actually scored in favour of their movement, in con- 
nection with the Lincoln judgment (of 1892) and otherwise. 

The Modern Ritualistic Elflorescence 

And now — ^while in 1859 the attempt of the Rector of 
St George's in the East to introduce Eucharistic vestments 
set the whole of East London in a ferment — a pronounced 
Rituahstic service has been gloried in with impunity for 
years by a great and growing army of Anglo -CathoUc 
clergy, whose dehght it is to blur out, as far as may be, 
everything that distinguishes their own Church in doctrine 
and in ceremony from the Church of Rome. 

" We set the bulbs," said Dr Pusey, " which were to 
bring forth the flowers." And verily the bulbs have pro- 
duced an abundant harvest ! Here are some statistics, 
showing the Romeward progress that has gone on with 
growing momentum. The figures, the most recent appar- 
entlv available, are taken from " The Tourist's Church 
Guide " of the Enghsh Church Union for 1901-2 : 





1882 


1901 


Ritualistic Churches 


2581 


8689 


Daily Holy Eucharist . 


123 


674 


Eucharistic Vestments 


336 


2158 


Incense 


9 


393 


Altar Lights 


581 


4765 


Mixed ChaHce 




4730 


Eastward Position 


1662 


7397 



The figures under these various heads have no doubt been 
largely added to since 1901, and quite a number of other 
innovations (or " renovations," as their promoters would 



in the Church of England 7 

prefer to call them) might be mentioned, which, in a kind 
of geometrical progression, have been foisted for several 
decades upon the Church of England. Some of these 
may seem in themselves trivial enough — trivial even to 
childishness. But the claim should be carefully noted — 
"It is not for chasubles and copes and Ughted tapers and 
the Uke that we are contending, but for the doctrines 
which lie hidden under them." 

" Christianity versus Protestantism ! '* 

Now, whatever may be said of the RituaUsts, we may 
all be well assured that as a party they are thoroughly in 
earnest, and know very well what they are driving at. 
They take the very gravest view of the issues at stake. 
Mr Bennet, for example, when examined before the Ritual 
Commissioners, did not hesitate to describe the contest in 
which he and his friends were engaged as " a struggle 
between Christianity and Protestantism.''^ This sounds 
to instructed ears a curious antithesis ; but the affirma- 
tion of it may teach us where we stand. And surely 
there is abundant reason now to repeat with tenfold em- 
phasis the words Sir William Harcourt uttered in the 
debate on the second reading of the Public Worship 
Regulation Bill in 1874 : " What is required hy the nation, 
and what Parliament has to do, is to assert the unalterable 
attachment of the English people to the principles of the 
English Reformation. It is necessary to show that the 
National Church of England is in reality what it ought to 
be — the Church of a Protestant .nation.'^ 

The Two Centres of Present Disturbance 

The conflict, as we know, has mainly raged round two 
centres of disturbance — the perversion of the Eucharist 
and the practice of Auricular Confession. Both of these 
abuses have sprung from one root — the idea common to 
Romanism and RituaUsm ahke, that Christ is, so to speak, 
" incarnated still in His Church," whose priesthood, sancti- 
fied through the grace of Orders, is a distinct sacerdotal 
caste, qualified to mediate by sacrifice between man and 



8 The Romanising Movement 

God, and to pronounce with a divine authority absolution 
on the sinner When we remember what the Mass on the 
one hand, and the Confessional on the other, cost our 
country in the olden days, we can hardly wonder that John 
Bull does not wish them back again, and grows distinctly 
restive when he discovers behind the pretensions of the 
RituaUstic clergy the same haughty spirit, though veiled, 
which spoke through the Spanish priest to the Spanish 
King : ^" I am greater than thou ; for lo ! I hold thy God 
in my hand, and thy wife at my feet ! " 



The Mass in England— among Old and Young 

There can be no doubt that the Mass — which brave John 
Knox feared more than an army with swords and banners, 
and which the 31st Article counts among '' blasphemous 
fables and dangerous deceits " — has been firmly entrenched 
within the Church of England. Or, as the Romanisers 
express it, " The daily sacrifice has been restored to the 
Altars of the EngUsh branch of the CathoUc Church." 
Yet it is not so long ago since the late Archbishop Thomson 
of York was declaring, " I would ten thousand times 
rather see the Church disestablished than the Mass 
introduced." 

Why, there are even Children's Masses, in which the 
Uttle ones are taught to say or sing from the manuals put 
into their hands such words as these — '* Bless, Lord, the 
priest who now stands at the Altar, and accept the sacrifice 
he is about to offer to Thee " ; and again at the elevation 
of the host, " I worship and adore Thee, Lord Jesus ; I 
adore Thy body, Thy soul and Thy divinity, Thy flesh and 
Thy blood truly present in this sacrament." 



Auricular Confession 

And there can be as httle doubt that the abominable 
system of receiving private confessions from men and 
women — " of their whole Uves in detail," as is claimed, 
" as minute as any that can possibly be made to a Roman 
Cathohc priest " — is widely in vogue in the Church of 



in the Church of England 9 

England. Auricular confession cannot be made strictly 
compulsory and universal, as the Romanisers fain would 
make it ; but it is practically enjoined by the Ritualists, 
in their manuals of doctrine and devotion, on all who value 
the health of their souls, and priestcraft knows how, by 
indirect but effectual methods, to make it more general 
and habitual as the years go by. Here again the young 
and susceptible are dealt with. Even Uttle children are 
subjected to most unwholesomely suggestive questioning 
and have the sense of priestly authority riveted early upon 
conscience and heart. And thus English congregations 
and English schools are made nurseries for Rome. 

A Vain Plea 

Now, of course, all this, and a great deal besides, is 
directly in the teeth of the Articles and rubrics of the 
Church of England. The Ritualists hardly attempt to 
deny it. They sometimes make the feeble retort that the 
EvangeUcals themselves, in omitting the Athanasian Creed, 
and ignoring certain minor directions of the Prayer Book, 
do not act in perfect accordance with the legal requirements 
of the holy office. To this a witty Irishman gave a sufficient 
rejoinder when he said that, even if the housemaid were 
proved not to dust the furniture and sweep below the mats 
as thoroughly as she might do, this would scarcely excuse 
the cook for putting .deadly poison in the family food, or 
the butler for pawning the plate ! 

Nobody can charge the EvangeUcals with being un- 
true to the 28th of the Thirty-nine Articles — " Tran- 
substantiation (or the change of the substance of Bread 
and Wine) in the Supper of the Lord, cannot be proved 
by Holy Writ ; but is repugnant to the plain words of 
Scripture, overthroweth the nature of a Sacrament and hath 
given occasion to many superstitions. . . . The Sacrament 
of the Lord's Supper was not by Christ's ordinance reserved, 
carried about, lifted up, or worshipped." Nor do the 
EvangeUcal Party contravene Ijhe very plain and emphatic 
pronouncement in the Communion Office of the Church of 
England — which Ritualists denounce as "the black Rubric" 
— concerning Kneehng at the Sacrament : — '' It is hereby 



10 The Romanising Movement 

declared, that thereby no adoration is intended, or ought 
to be done, either unto the Sacramental Bread or Wine 
there bodily received, or unto any Corporal presence of 
Christ's natural Flesh and Blood. For the Sacramental 
Bread and Wine remain still in their very natural substances, 
and therefore may not be adored (/or that were Idolatry, to 
he abhorred of all faithful Christians) ; and the natural Body 
and Blood of our Sa\aour Christ are in Heaven and not 
here, it being against the truth of Christ's natural Body 
to be at one time in more places than one." 

Defying the Law 

It is clear, however, that whatever the Evangehcals might 
do or omit to do, and whatever the Articles and the Prayer 
Book might be shown, when taken together and fairly 
interpreted in the hght of history, to mean, the Komanisers 
would press without scruple on their wilful way. The law 
courts have again and again pronounced against certain 
of their practices ; but they have succeeded in eluding the 
law by apparent temporary comphance or have even, on 
occasion, made bold to defy the law. 

It was a characteristic spirit, e.g., which breathed through 
the remarks of Lord Halifax at Bradford, where, with the 
air of martyred innocence, he complained that " The clergy 
had been admonished pubhcly to cease from hearing con- 
fessions ; to abstain from reserving- the sacrament, and 
from pubUc prayers for the departed ; and to give up hghts 
and incense and vestments." " It is impossible," he went 
on to say, " to be silent in the face of such facts, and it is 
necessary to state quite distinctly that we refuse to see 
the worship of the Church so degraded (loud cheers), and 
ourselves and our children deprived of what we know, from 
long experience, is for our souls' health. We beUeve the 
Holy Eucharist to be one and the same service with the 
Mass. And we emphatically repudiate the claim of the 
Privy Council, and of all courts subject to its jurisdiction, 
to adjudicate in spiritual matters ; and we deny the right of 
Parhament to determine the doctrine and discipHne of the 
Church." 



in the Church of England 1 1 

Despising the '' Successors of the Apostles " 

Now it need hardly be matter of surprise that Anglo- 
Cathohcs should sometimes contemn a lay interpretation 
of their principles and duty, and vigorously kick against 
the decisions of what has been elegantly described as 
" official incompetence and corporate imbecihty." But 
what are we to think of the way in which these strenuous 
supporters of Apostohc Succession treat the authority of 
their own bishops, whom they theoretically regard as the 
mouthpiece of the Church and of Christ Himself ? As a 
writer in the Quarterly Review put it years ago, " /i has 
been reserved for those by whom the bishops are professedly 
regarded as the successors of the Apostles, as the one evidence 
of a true Church, to treat them with a contempt and a defiance 
which in no other profession of men ivould be tolerated from 
inferiors to superiors'' 

One explanation of this temerity may be found in the 
circumstance that the Romanisers, while they see a certain 
advantage in remaining within the EstabUshment and 
using its pay and prestige for their own ends, have not 
anything like so strong an objection to disestabUshment 
in itself as their ecclesiastical superiors have, or even as 
is cherished by the other sections of the Church, whether 
broad or high or low. Rather than cease to Romanise, 
they w^ould probably accept disestabhshment to-morrow ; 
and not a few of them would positively welcome freedom 
from State trammels, were it not for the collateral conse- 
quences. Assimilation to, and ultimate union with, 
Rome is of far more importance to them than union with 
the State. Their ideal for the present would be a secure 
position within the Church of England, in which to do 
their noxious work, free from interference by the bishops 
and untroubled by the judgments of nasty courts of 
law. 

Can we wonder that such men put a sore strain on the 
indulgence of Episcopal authorities, who are anxious, as 
Archbishop Temple frankly put it, to " satisfy the whole 
Church and keep things together ? " The bishops, if 
anybody, should be able without difficulty to answer the 
conundrum wdth which a waggish Dean puzzled Mr 



12 ^he Romanising Movement 

Gladstone, " Why are the RituaUsts the most irritating 
of human beings ? " — the answer being, " Because they are 
always crossing themselves and incensitig others." But 
the RituaUsts on their part take courage from the assur- 
ance that the bishops have not preached for the last time 
yet to the EvangeUcals upon the text, " Except these abide 
in the ship, ye cannot be saved." 

Perhaps, however, a deeper explanation of their lawless- 
ness, in the case of some, at least, of the priestly Roman- 
isers, is found in the view they have come to take of Angli- 
can Orders. It is one of the startUng facts of the present 
situation in England — as Mr Walsh brings out in his 
powerful volume on " The Secret History of the Oxford 
Movement " — that some hundreds of already ordained 
priests, dubious of the validity of their Anghcan ordination, 
have tapped the grace of Orders at a foreign source. In 
these circumstances, their reverence for the merely possible 
bishops and archbishops at home — who may be no better 
really than dressed-up Presbyterians, set on thrones and 
endowed with fatter livings than Presbyterians ever boast 
— cannot be expected to be very profound. 

Episcopal Compliance 

Certainly a serious element in the situation has been 
the attitude of the bishops. Not many of them, perhaps, 
personally favour, in its extreme phase, the RituaUstic 
movement, though certain of them have given too much 
ground for beUeving that they do. That some of them 
have spoken out manfully against it in their dioceses, is 
certain. But, for the most part, the attitude of the 
Episcopate has been that of men who are painfully ill- 
prepared to do anything effectual, under existing conditions, 
to stay the plague. 

This was only too apparent in the utterances of the 
doughty Archbishop Temple himself. The note of com- 
promise was very plainly heard throughout one eloquent 
charge of his — on the Eucharist, prayers for the dead, 
confession and ceremonial — and one seemed to hear, every 
time the Primate paused to take a breath, an echo of the 
deep-drawn prayer, " Give peace in our time, Lord ! " 



in the Church of England 1 3 

Archbishop Temple and *' Consubstantiation " 

One notable instance in wliicli the Archbishop satisfied 
neither party — though of the two he may have pleased 
the Rituahsts most — was in his utterance on the Eucharistic 
sacrifice. He himself held by Hooker's interpretation of 
the doctrine of the Church of England — that "the real 
presence should not be looked for in the consecrated ele- 
ments, but in the receivers." But he went on to say that 
" The Church nowhere forbids the further doctrine, that 
there is a real presence in some way attached to the ele- 
ments at the time of consecration and before the reception." 

And, grounding on the decision of the Privy Council in 
the famous Bennet Case, he even affirmed that there is 
nothing in the Church's formularies to prevent a man 
holding or teaching, as Mr Bennet did, the adorable presence 
of Christ in the sacrament, " under the form of bread and 
wine, beheving that under their veil is the sacred body and 
blood of my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." This, urged 
the Archbishop, cannot really be distinguished from the 
Lutheran doctrine of consubstantiation. " And it is 
important," he said, " that it should be clearly understood 
that it is not unlawful to hold it and to teach it within 
the Church of England." 

Now it would require more space than we can give it to 
expound the pecuhar Lutheran doctrine of "a corporal 
consubstantiation of Christ in, with or under, the elements " 
and the alhed Lutheran doctrine of the ubiquity of Christ's 
body. We cannot stay just now to prove how plainly 
inconsistent such a doctrine is with the 28th and 
29th Articles of Rehgion, and with the express de- 
clarations of the Reformers, or even to indicate the con- 
vincing argument by which Archdeacon Taylor of Liver- 
pool and Sir Wilham Harcourt conclusively rebutted Dr 
Temple's interpretation of the Bennet judgment. 

A Perilous Concession 

The important thing to note is that a Primate of the 
Church of England has avowed an opinion which no Arch- 
bishop ever ventilated before, from the days of the Re- 
formation until now — that while fmn^-substantiation is 



14 ^he Romanising Movement 

not permissible in the Church, consubstantiation (though 
in some respects the less logically consistent and meta- 
physically defensible doctrine of the two), is permissible. 
Now it is evident that this opinion, inasmuch as it puts 
the ban on the recognised doctrine of the Council of Trent, 
cannot satisfy the thorough-paced Romanisers in the 
Church of England, though they may hail it as an im- 
portant payment to account, or as a high-water mark for 
the present, of Archi-Episcopal concession. On the other 
hand, the Evangelicals unfeignedly deplore it as a virtual 
giving away of the true and only defensible Protestant 
position. And with reason. For if this be yielded — if it is 
admitted that, as the result of a Priestly consecrating act, 
there is an actual objective localised presence of Christ, 
" attached to the elements in some way " apart from the 
faith of the receiver — then the main contention of sacerdo- 
talism is conceded, and with it, logically, there is granted 
room for the Eucharistic sacrifice in the Ritualistic sense, 
and for adoration and reservation too. The popular mind 
will not trouble itself long about subtle distinctions be- 
tween con and trans, and the Ritualists, using Anglicanism 
(in Principal Rainy's apt phrase) as " a conductor for 
Romanism to England," may be trusted to make the most 
of the altered situation. 

One cannot but recall in contrast with this charge of 
Dr Temple's the testimony of some of his predecessors in 
his influential office — that of Archbishop Longley, e.g., who 
deplored that " whereas the Reformers died to turn 
the Mass into the Communion, the Ritualists were doing all 
they could to turn the Communion into the Mass " ; or 
that of Archbishops Tait and Thomson, who, in reply to 
a memorial from sixty thousand lay members of the Church 
of England calling attention to the Romanising movement, 
wrote : " There can be no doubt that the danger you appre- 
hend, of a considerable minority both of clergy and laity 
amongst us desiring to subvert the principles of the Re- 
formation, is real. We feel justified in appealing to all 
reasonable men to consider whether the very existence 
of our national institutions for the maintenance of religion 
is not imperilled by the evil of which you complain." 

The situation is far from bavins been relieved since the 



in the Church of England 1 5 

deceased Archbishops wrote these words. It has grown 
immeasurably more grave and critical, and there is a loud 
call to all lovers of Christianity and of country to turn in 
earnest supplication to Him who still can bring Ught out of 
darkness and order out of confusion. 



** Back to Mediae valism " 

It is the declared intention of Lord Halifax and his 
numerous following to do everything possible to restore 
mediaevaUsm in the Enghsh Church, and to keep in line, 
in matters of doctrine and worship at anyrate, with " the 
great Western Patriarchate." As regards Church govern- 
ment — well, they will wait for happier days ; and if it is 
to be a case of submission and absorption after all, as Rome 
seems minded to insist,, it will be at anyrate the annexation 
of such a goodly band as to fill the heart of *' the Vicar of 
Christ " with joy. 

Need anybody be surprised if ParUament has given 
ominous indications, from time to time, that it does not 
exactly hke this Une of poHcy in a Church which it regards 
as a State institution, " estabUshed by law " ? The re- 
solution passed in the House of Commons on 11th April 
1899, by 200 votes to 14, was full of significance — " That 
this House deplores the spirit of lawlessness shown by 
certain members of the Church of England, and confi- 
dently hopes that the ministers of the Crown will not 
recommend any clergyman for ecclesiastical preferment, 
unless they are satisfied that he will loyally obey the 
Bishops, and the Prayer Book, and the law, as declared 
by the courts which have jurisdiction in matters 
ecclesiastical." 

Episcopacy on its Trial 

As for the Episcopate, they did bestir themselves at the 
time referred to, to some' extent. Not only did they pass 
resolutions, but in certain cases they dealt effectively with 
offenders ; and the Archbishops showed anxiety to do good 
through their special Inquiry at Lambeth. The hope, 
however, that practical measures on a wide scale would 



1 6 The Romanising Movement 

result in the repression of evils for which the Episcopal 
laissez-faire of past years had been largely responsible 
has been only very partially fulfilled. What one of the 
supporters of the Church Discipline Bill called the attempt 
of the Archbishops and Bishops *' to govern the Church 
by connivance " is still too much in evidence ; and the 
admonition conveyed them in a leading journal is still 
pertinent : " The Bishop is a dignitary who is called upon 
to justify his existence, and does not seem to be aware of 
the demand that is being made upon him. Yesterday's 
debate should be a lesson to him." 

The truth is, that not only the Church EstabUshment 
in England, but Episcopacy itself, may be said to be upon 
its trial. The late Lord Salisbury is reported to have 
frankly declared, ''It is quite true that there is no disci- 
pline in the Church of England." It is surely incumbent 
on all earnest men in the Church of England to unite in 
the determination that, somehow or other, this description 
shall cease to be applicable ; and it would evidently be 
largely helpful to that end if ecclesiastical government and 
administration were brought more into line with the civil 
analogies which England herself suppUes. 

There are no doubt risks in setting up new machinery in 
order to make disciphne a reahty. But the late Duke of 
ArygU hit the nail on the head when he pointed out that, 
" as things exist, the laity of the English Church have 
absolutely no organ in spiritual things." And things 
cannot remain as they are. One thing seems certain, 
that the power of the laity will have to be far more effect- 
ually felt than it has been within the Church of England, 
or else — upon it. Eegard for the truth of God, regard for 
our country's highest well-being, regard for the law of 
common honesty, require of loyal men all possible sym- 
pathy and support for those who, whether within or out- 
side of the Establishment, so reasonably insist, that while 
avowed Romanists are perfectly free to propagate their 
opinions in every legitimate way, " the Protestant reformed 
reUgion estabhshed by law " is not to be flouted, or the 
blessings of the Reformation to be filched away, by men who 
have been solemnly pledged to their defence. 



in the Church of England 1 7 

The Impending Alternatives 

The alternatives of the future are apparently three. 
Either the Establishment will get rid of the Romanisers ; 
or the nation \vill rid itself of the Establishment ; or the 
Romanisers will have their heel in course of time on the 
neck both of the Church and of the nation. The last is an 
alternative, which, in view of England's history and the 
robust abiding characteristics of the Enghsh people, seems 
at this time of day almost unthinkable ; and there have 
been indications, as we have seen, that Parliament, re- 
flecting the mind of the laity of England, will be found in 
no mood to suffer it. Which of the other two alternatives 
is to be inscribed on the page of actual Enghsh history, 
time will reveal. 



II. THE DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE 
SACERDOTALIST PROPAGANDA 

Having thus viewed the Romanising movement in the 
light of history, we may proceed to examine its doctrinal 
implications — bringing clearly out what is meant by 
" Sacerdotahsm " and " Ritualism " respectively, and what 
is the natural and lineal relationship between the two. 

Let there be no Confusing of the Issue 

'' Sacerdos " signifies a sacrificing priest ; and the real 
issue in this whole controversy is simply this — Are we to 
have a Christian ministry, or, a sacrificing priesthood ? 
The Lord's Supper, or, the sacrifice of the Mass ? The 
Reformation, or, Rome ? And what we have to vindicate 
is the soul's right and liberty of direct access to God Him- 
self through Christ the only Mediator, as against the 
interposition of a caste of magically-endowed men and a 
system of mysteriously- efficacious machinery, unwarrant- 
ably prescribed as the necessary medium of grace. 

"A struggle between Christianity and Protestantism," 
as Mr Bennet of Frome called it, forsooth ! What it 
should be counted, rather, is, a war upon Christianity by 
modernised Judaism — a system of elaborate symbolism, 



1 8 The Romanising Movement 

which was stripped of every pretext for its continuance 
by the finished work of Christ upon the Cross of Calvary. 
We find the attempt sometimes made to confuse the 
issue. This is elaborately .done, for example, by the Eev. 
Canon MacCoU, one of the ablest of the rituahstic clergy, 
when he contends that the Evangehcals, in condemning 
modern SacerdotaHsm, are condemning as " essentially 
wrong " something which God Himself in the Old Testa- 
ment enjoined. " They condemn it," he says, " as some- 
thing emphatically wrong in itself. It is certain, however, 
if the Old Testament is divinely inspired, that SacerdotaHsm 
is a doctrine not only sanctioned but peremptorily enjoined 
by Almighty God Himself. But can God enjoin what is 
essentially wrong ? " Certainly not, we reply. But no 
intelUgent opponent of Sacerdotalism ever said that it is a 
thing " essentially " wrong. It is freely granted that in 
the Old Testament a sacrificing priesthood was instituted 
by God — of the family of Aaron and the tribe of Levi — 
whose priestly functions were typical of those of the Great 
High Priest yet to come. But what we deny is, that in the 
Christian Church the Lord has ordained a certain order 
of men to occupy a position, and "to fulfil functions 
analogous to those of the Aaronic priesthood." There is, 
in point of fact, a whole book of the New Testament de- 
voted to the very purpose of showing that this is not so. 
The Epistle to the Hebrews — which Rome herself recognises 
as canonical — demonstrates with reiterative clearness, 
that in the one Great High Priest, and the one Great Sacri- 
fice offered once for all on Calvary, the many priests and 
many sacrifices of the Old Testament have been done away. 

The Spiritual Priesthood of all Believers 

It is indeed true that in the New Testament all behevers 
are regarded as a spiritual priesthood ; and, in that sense, 
the whole Church of Christ may be viewed and spoken of 
as a sacerdotal society. It has even been justly contended 
that " the doctrine of the spiritual priesthood of all be- 
hevers is the root of all Reformation theology." But 
here again we must not allow the issue to be confused. 
The sacrifices which behevers are called to offer now are 



in the Church of England 19 

spiritual sacrifices of praise — the thank-offerings of glad- 
some Christian service — ^the oblation of themselves, body, 
soul, and spirit to God. And the intercessions they present 
are to be based, not on anything they can do or offer, but 
on the merit and mediation of the Lord Jesus Christ, who 
is the only propitiatory Priest and Sacrifice anywhere 
recognised in the New Testament. 

(a) The Blasphemous Sacerdotal Claim 

How different the ground taken by the Reformers, in 
admitting or rather asserting this spiritual priesthood of 
all beUevers, is from that of the Roman or Anglo-CathoUcs, 
one or two further quotations from these will bring out. 
Thus, Cardinal Vaughan unequivocally declared : '* The 
Divine Founder of Christianity established His reUgion as 
a sacramental and sacrijSicial system, absolutely dependent 
on a sacerdotal order instituted by Christ Himself. The 
spiritual Ufe of the soul is created, nourished, and perfected 
through the sacraments ; and the priests administering 
them possess miraculous powers, whereby they daily offer 
the true sacrifice of Jesus Christ upon the altar, forgive the 
sins of men, and teach the truths of salvation with divine 
authority." And the position of Anglo-Cathohcs is practi- 
cally the same. " The office of the priest," says one of 
their manuals, * The Ministry of Consolation,' " and the 
reverence due, depend entirely on that cardinal doctrine 
of the earthly priesthood, as the divinely appointed channel 
through which the omnipotent power of the sinless High 
Priest in heaven is conveyed to the ordinances of the Church, 
and through them apphed to the souls of His members." 
Or, as the " Catechism of Theology " succinctly puts it : 
" The priest at the altar is virtually Christ Himself." Lord 
Hahfax, in a paper read before the Confraternity of the 
Blessed Sacrament, advanced what can be only fitly de- 
scribed as blasphemous assumption on behalf of the Angh- 
can priesthood in these words : " It is our dignity, and 
the glory of our consecration as a royal priesthood, that 
Jesus Christ has entrusted the offering of the sacrifice made 
on Calvary to human agencies, and that He permits it to 
depend upon us whether He, the great High Priest of our 



20 The Romanising Movement 

profession, should be allowed to exercise His priestly 
functions at our altars or no. By His gracious conde- 
scension, the freewill of the Blessed Virgin was permitted 
to co-operate with God in determining the time of the 
Incarnation : by a condescension no less gracious He leaves 
Himself in our power in the Eucharist, which is the ex- 
tension of the Incarnation." Such being the nature, ex- 
tent, and enormity of the Sacerdotal Claim, let* us now 
examine the foundation on which it rests. 

The Flimsy Foundation of Sacerdotal Assumptions 

The monstrous pretensions of the Roman and Anglo - 
Cathohc priesthood all depend upon the remarkable figment 
known as " The Apostohc Succession." This theory means, 
in effect, that Christ bestowed certain powers or functions 
on His first disciples ; and that these have been transmitted 
in regular order, without a single broken Unk, from Christ's 
own day even until now. 

As regards the latter part of this assumption, it is more 
correct to say that, instead of being without a broken Unk, 
the connection is " all broken hnks together." The historic 
continuity of, let us say, Presbyterian or Methodist pastors 
is just as well defined from the Apostles' days till now ; 
so that these may claim on that sort of ground, at the very 
least, an equal share in the heritage of Christ. 

It does, on the face of it, seem a very singular claim, that 
God, in the bestowal of blessing through the Sacraments, 
should have limited Himself to a particular line of conse- 
crated priests : and it is certainly a claim that is very 
difficult to establish. It seems, also, rather a mechanical 
way of looking at things, " to suppose grace," as one has 
put it, " to pass along a certain wire, along a succession of 
priestly hands and heads, as if upon a telegraph line, trans- 
mitting saving grace and keeping such grace within that 
Hne alone." That sort of monopoly does not appear to 
be in keeping with the authoritative teaching of Christ ; 
and when it is said to " debase the Christian's conception 
of grace, and confine, externalise, and degrade it," the 
impeachment is not a whit too strong. 

It is well to be reminded that " the Spirit bloweth where 



in the Church of England 21 

He listeth " — and that " the Divine Ufe is over men to-day 
— so that grace has not had to travel down all those tele- 
graph posts of centuries, but comes fresh every day to the 
spiritual mind from the Uving Spirit of the Lord." 

We will not stay to discuss just now the worth of this 
link and that in the pretended chain ; nor is it needful 
to enter into the merits of a controversy, which greatly 
disturbed the minds of certain members of the Church of 
England some years ago, on the question of the vaUdity of 
Anghcan Orders. It seems all so mechanical and artificial, 
especially when one considers how possible it is, under 
the theory in question, for grace to pass on through the 
worst of men. Verily this grace appears to be less 
sensitive than electricity, inasmuch as, we are told, it can 
go through a distinctly unsympathetic medium ! 

But worse remains behind. For the fact of the matter 
is — tell it not in Gath ! — that the very first link in the chain 
of Apostolic Succession is awanting. 



The New Testament Knows no Priestly Caste 

What reason is there to assert that Christ conferred even 
on the Apostles the powers and functions ascribed to their 
so-called successors in the Roman or the Anglo -Catholic 
communion ? There is not an indication in the New 
Testament that they or any set of men succeeding them 
were appointed to be necessary intermediaries between 
the soul and God. On the contrary, as Dean Farrar 
proves, the name " Priest " {hpibg) is never once apphed 
to Christian ministers in the New Testament, from end to 
end, though that is the one name which Romanists and 
Rituahsts apply to their representative functionaries, and 
regard as all important. Surely this is a strange New 
Testament omission, from the Sacerdotalist point of view. 
From the analogies of Judaism, to say nothing of the 
religions of the Pagan world, the name of " priest " w^as a 
name which came very readily to hand. It is very re- 
markable, therefore, that while the servants of the Gospel 
are called in holy wrif Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, 
Pastors, Teachers, Ministers, Presbyters, Deacons, Stewards, 



22 The Romanising Movement 

the name /^psi/g is never once applied to one of them. 
And the case against the Sacerdotalists is further 
strengthened by the circumstance that this name 
is apphed, twice by St Peter and three times in the 
Apocalypse, not to the ministry distinctively, but to all 
Christians. But their sacrificial priesthood is clearly 
defined, in the language of the supposed forerunner of the 
popes, by the limiting clause—" to offer spiritual sacrifices,'^ 
" the praises of God." 

(6) The Fruits of Sacerdotalism 

Having seen the enormity of the Sacerdotal claim, and 
the shallowness of the foundation on which it rests, it 
remains to consider its fruits, in practical manifestation. 

Here two sections of churchly machinery come into 
view, the Confessional and the Eucharistic Sacrifice, in 
respect of both of T^rhich the Roman and the Anglo-CathoUc 
are in essential agreement. 

Two Features of the Confessional 

As regards the Confessional, two points may be emphasized 
in connection with it here. 

The first is, that the AngUcan Sacerdotal clergy claim 
the right to search the hearts of the penitents, so far as minute 
questioning will do it — questioning as minute as any that 
can be resorted to in the Confessional boxes of Rome. 

The other point is, that the Sacerdotal clergy claim the 
right authoritatively to pronounce absolution on the sinner — 
not merely in a declarative sense, but as the very represen- 
tatives and delegates of God. They do not only, that is 
to say, announce on Scripture grounds that, granted 
penitence and faith in Christ in the heart of the sinner, 
pardon is freely bestowed by God. But what the Sacer- 
dotaUst claims is, that as priest he has had, in a special 
sense, authority committed to him to dispense or to with- 
hold divine mercy ; so that it behoves the anxious sinner 
to transact with him as an agent or factor of God, in the 
matter of confession and absolution. 

We cannot here enlarge upon the individual and social 



in the Church oj England 23 

mischief wrought by the abominable confessional system, 
which Samuel Wilberforce appropriately denounced as 
" one of the worst developments of Popery — the renunci- 
ation of the great charge of a conscience which God has 
committed to every man^ — a sort of spiritual dram-drinking, 
fraught with evil to the whole spiritual constitution." 
Enough at this point to emphasize the blasphemous assump- 
tion involved in it — looking at the system from the 
priestly confessor's side — and the extraordinary oppor- 
tunities it affords to Sacerdotal tyranny of binding its 
enslaving yoke upon the section of society brought thus 
within its reach. 

" The Eucharistie Sacrifice " 

Let us turn, however, next, to a fuller consideration of 
SacerdotaUsm as exhibited in the Eucharist. It involves 
a claim, as Cardinal Vaughan bluntly expressed it, " to 
produce Christ upon the Altars of the Church." And what 
that means was brought home very vividly to the British 
people in connection with the Eucharist Congress a few 
years ago at Westminster. 

The language of the New Testament on the subject of the 
sacrifice of Christ is most expUcit. What it evidently 
and everywhere emphasizes, with unmistakable clearness, 
is the uniqueness of the priest and the oneness of the 
sacrifice in our New Testament reUgion. For, whereas 
among the ancient Hebrews there were many priests and 
many typical sacrifices, Christianity knows but one sacri- 
ficing priest and one propitiatory offering — the Priest and 
the Offering being indeed not two but one — Jesus Christ, 
the Incarnate Son of God. 

And yet, what do we find Pope Pius X., for example, 
affirming, directly in the teeth of all this, at the time of 
the London Eucharistie Congress ? What he says is in 
strict accord with the authoritative* Canons of the Council 
of Trent on the subject. That the Eucharist is to be 
venerated " not only as the greatest of the sacraments, 
but as a sacrifice " ; that " in the Eucharist that self-same 
sacrifice offered once upon the Cross is renewed, and that 
in this sacrifice there is not merely a tribute of thanks- 



24 The Romanising Movement 

giving and praise, but an offering of atonement and pro- 
pitiation '• ; that, in short, you have in the Christian 
Eucharist, not the observance of a solemn and grateful 
memorial feast, but the performance of the magical rite 
known as "the Mass," in which the priest, who has the 
supernatural made subject to him, transmutes by his in- 
cantations the elements of bread and wine into the actual 
body and blood of our Lord, wherewith he renews " the 
self -same sacrifice once offered upon the Cross." 

The Figment on which '' the Self -same Sacrifice " 
Claim Rests 

Regarding the figment of Transubstantiation on which 
this theory of repeated or renewed sacrifice rests, it is not 
necessary to say much here. This monstrous doctrine 
has no support whatever either in Scripture or in common- 
sense. Rome demands a literal interpretation of the 
words, " This is my body : this is my blood," though Christ, 
when He spoke, was actually present in the body, and 
obviously used " is " in the familiar sense of " represents." 
And when Rome asks us to believe that, through priestly 
consecration, the bread and wine have been transmuted 
into the actual body and blood of the Redeemer, she is not 
only unsupported but flatly contradicted by our senses, 
to four of which the bread and wine are the same after their 
consecration as before. 

The effect, as well as the intention, of the whole theory 
and the sacerdotal jugglery associated with it evidently is 
to " put the priest and his work in the place of Christ and 
His work," and, as it has been phrased, " blasphemously 
to subject the awful Divinity of our Saviour to the control 
of His sinful creatures, who at their own will call Him down 
from Heaven, and withhold or communicate Him, as they 
list, among the people." 

There is a call here less for derision than for amazement 
and sorrow ; but may we not only too aptly apply to the 
adoration of the host to-day words akin to those in which 
the Prophet Isaiah so contemptuously described the 
idolatry of his own time ? — " A man reaps his corn in the 
field, carries it on a cart, threshes it in a mill, makes it into 



in the Church oj England 25 

dough ; and then part of it is eaten ; and the residue 
thereof he maketh a god; he falleth down unto it, and 
worshippeth it, and saith, Dehver me, for thou art my 
God!" 

Plaintive, Perambulating Priests at Westminster 

Now, the British people, being predominantly Protestant, 
are proverbially tolerant, and will not put down even 
idolatry with a high hand. But they naturally objected, 
at the time of the Westminster Congress, to having 
the Divine Head of their reUgion presented pubUcly for 
adoration in the form of a wafer, and the central rite of 
their reUgion caricatured in the streets. Hence the plaintive 
note struck by Archbishop (now Cardinal) Bourne, in 
announcing the eUmination of what was meant to be the 
chief feature of the procession — " It is not permitted to 
us to carry our Divine Master with us ! " — awakened but 
Uttle sympathy. 

" To carry our Divine Master with us ! " — what a reversal 
of the proper order of things 1 We have been accustomed 
to look to Rim as the One to carry us, as He has carried 
His people all the days of old. " To carry our Divine 
Master with us " — this is the kind of programme to be 
looked for in India and other lands of heathendom, but 
surely not at Westminster, London ! " We are not per- 
mitted to carry our Divine Master with us " — well, in so 
far as such a mode of expression is admissible, who could 
prevent ? Protestant Christians remember the Lord's 
promise to His servants — " Lo, I am with you all the days " 
— and know that they can safely count upon His Presence, 
wherever and whenever they go upon His errands. Pro- 
testant Christians join with Paul in the prayer, " that 
Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith " (Eph. iii. 17), 
and are assured that, when that prayer is fulfilled, no fiat 
of earthly potentate can prevent us from " carrying our 
Divine Master with us " as we engage in His service. 

Poor Legates, and Cardinals, and Archbishops, and other 
perambulating clerics, we are sorry for you — to have a God 
who can be magically reduced to a wafer ; to have a Saviour 
that Caesar can prevent accompanying you ; to be sent 



26 The Romanising Movement 

on a procession in which you can bear the " garments of 
salvation " only upon the arm ! That may be an imposing 
procession ; but it will not impose upon a people who know 
the teachings of the Word of God. 



Anglo-Catholics at one with Romanists anent the 
Eucharist 

Now, it may be conclusively shown that the Anglo- 
CathoUcs are essentially at one Avith the Romanists in their 
view of the Eucharist, though they are usually careful not 
to utter themselves upon it with such terse frankness. 

Whether the theory of Transubstantiation be adopted 
{i.e., that " the substance " of the bread and wine is actually 
" changed across " into the substance of the body and blood 
of the Redeemer), or the theory of Consubstantiation {i.e. 
that the actual body and blood of Christ are '' consub- 
stantially present in, with, or under the elements "), the 
main contention of Sacerdotalism is conceded, so long as 
it is granted that a localised presence of Christ is attached 
to the dements, as the result of priestly consecration, altogether 
apart from the faith of the recipient. 

Reference has already been made to the seriousness of 
one unhappy utterance of the late Archbishop Temple, 
on the subject of the Eucharist. No one who knew any- 
thing of the Primate's antecedents could suspect him of 
any personal sympathy \vith the Romanising movement. 
But, grounding on what Sir WiUiam Harcourt showed to 
be a misrepresentation of the Bennet judgment, the Arch- 
bishop proclaimed the admissibiUty of a doctrine equivalent 
to Consubstantiation within the Church of England. This 
was a concession, however, which logically would open the 
way for adoration, and for the reservation of the sacrament 
too — in short, for the Romish Mass, with all its dark 
accompaniments. 

It should be enough to read alongside such utterances 
the Articles of ReHgion bearing on this subject, which have 
been subscribed to by all the clergy of the Church of Eng- 
land, as containing " the true doctrine of the Church of 
England, agreeable to God's Word." Attention may be 



in the Church of England 27 

directed especially to Articles 28, 29, and 31. If you 
have there '' the true doctrine of the Church of England, 
agreeable to God's Word," what is to be said of those in 
that communion who, having sworn to this doctriile, yet 
maintain that there is a locaUsed bodily presence in the 
Sacrament, and an efficacious blessing through it, apart 
from faith in the recipient ? 



Sacramentarian Materialism. 

The truth is, that at the root of the Sacramentarian theory 
there is a gross materialism. 

And how completely the Anglo-CathoHcs adopt the 
Romish position respecting the Sacraments as the only 
channels of grace appears, for example, from the ground 
taken by Canon MacCoU in his letters to Lord Selborne in 
1875. " The Sacraments," he says, " are thus the con- 
tinuation of the Incarnation ; the channels through which 
the nature of the Second Head of our race is conveyed to 
His members. I know of no other way, for the Holy 
Scripture reveals none, in which we can be made par- 
takers of Christ. Faith is of course necessary, but faith is 
useless, if we refuse the means." 

Of course, w^e Protestants hold that Christ is " really 
present" — ^though not. in the Roman or Anglo-Catholic 
sense — ^to behevers in the observance of the Sacrament, 
and that He is to be partaken of by such, for the soul's 
nourishment and growth in grace. But it is not the con- 
secration of the elements by the minister that is the im- 
portant thing. It is the exercise of a lively personal faith 
toward Christ, and an affectionate appropriation of Him 
within the heart of the recipient. 

When our Lord speaks of our " eating His flesh " and 
" drinking His blood," He refers to our making Him our 
own as our Incarnate and Crucified Redeemer — the finding 
of spiritual strengthening and satisfying and enjoyment, 
in reaUsing by faith our union and communion with Him. 
He means more than the appropriation of the benefits of 
His atoning death — though these are unspeakably precious 
and indescribably great. He means the attainment, of 



28 7he Romanising Movement 

real and intimate fellowship with Himsdf in His sufferings 
and death, and in the newness of life to which through His 
death He quickens and upraises the soul. He means the 
welcoming of Him as the very hfe of the soul — the spring of 
our consolation, the secret of our sanctification, the guaran- 
tee of our hope. He means that, in a real though mystical 
sense, He, as the God-Man who has died, will be to our 
spiritual being what food is to the physical hfe, when 
it is not only looked at and handled and spoken 
about, but received, and assimilated and made part of 
ourselves. 



Lord Tennyson's Last Sacrament 

Lord Tennyson understood this when he took the sacra- 
ment for the last time with his family. " Before receiving 
it, he looked the rector in the face," we are told, " and 
repeated the hues which he himself had put into the mouth 
of Cranmer — "It is but a communion, not a 'Mass'; no 
sacrifice, but a life-giving feast." 

The late Laureate, it is evident, had no sympathy with 
the Romanisers ; and he loved his country too well not 
to have, in dying, sad and anxious thoughts concerning 
the evil leaven which was then working, and still works, so 
contagiously and disastrously in the Church of Cranmer, 
Latimer, and Ridley. 

(o) The Nature and Methods of Ritualism 

It is time for us, however, to consider next Rituahsm — 
what it is, how it works, what is its goal, and how the 
plague is to be stayed. 

As regards the nature of Ritualism, let us listen first 
to a voice which spoke from St Stephen's. 

Disraeli versus Gladstone at St Stephen's 

In the debate on the Second Reading of the Pubhc 
Worship Regulations Bill of 1874, Mr Disraeli, in opposition 
to Mr Gladstone (then member for Greenwich) said: "/ 



in the Church oj England 29 

take the object oj this Bill to he this — to put dowyi Ritualism, 
The Right Hon, Gentleman, the Member for Greenwich, says 
he does not know what Ritualism is ; but there, I think, the 
Right Hon. Gentleman is in an isolated position {cheers and 
laughter). That ignorance is not shared by the House of Com- 
mons or by the country. What the House and the country under- 
stand by Ritualism is — practices in the Church to which they are 
not used, but which they believe are Symbolic of Doctrines 
which are most uncompromisingly expressed and acknow- 
ledged by writers of that school. ^^ Then, after alluding to 
the adoption and representation by the Eitualistic Party 
of Eoman Catholic tenets, Mr Disraeli went on to say : 
'* As doctrines held by the members of the Eoman Catholic 
Church, I am prepared to treat them with reverence. What 
I. object to is, that they should be held by the ministers 
of a Church, who, when they enter that Church, make a 
solemn compact with the nation that they will utterly 
reject them." 

Now, this outspoken condemnation by the Prime Minister 
of that day appears to be a thoroughly sound ^ne. His 
definition of Eitualism is a correct working definition of 
it, precise enough for the purposes of a ParUamentary 
debate — " the practice by a certain portion of the clergy 
of the Church of England of ceremonials which they them- 
selves confess to be symboHcal of doctrines which they are 
pledged, by every solemn compact which can bind men to 
their sovereign and country, to denounce and repudiate." 
And his plea, that such symbolic ceremoniahsm on the part 
of Enghsh Church clergy ought not to be tolerated, was 
just the plea that was more recently urged with similar 
insistence by Sir William Harcourt and others in the House 
of Commons. 

The EituaUsts have been called " Nonconformists within 
the Church of England." But there is this great difference 
between the nonconformists outside the Church of England 
and these so-called nonconformists within it, that the 
latter have taken care to sacrifice nothing of State pay and 
prestige for their opinions, but have diUgently sought, as 
Lord Falkland expressed it in speaking of their predecessors 
of more than 200 years ago, " to reconcile the opinions of 
Rom^to the preferments of England.'' 



30 The Romanising Movement 



Ritualism a Presentation of Doctrine 

If we now turn to the statements of the RituaUsts them- 
selves, we are left in no doubt as to what they mean by 
Rituahsm. 

It is not merely a ^pleasing cesthetic display, fitted to gratify 
and captivate the senses. No doubt, to some, it is that ; and 
this furnishes one of the grounds on which it is sometimes 
frankly advocated. Dr Littledale, e.g., in " The Church 
and the World," uses arguments which really amount to 
this — that the Church is to enter into competition with 
the world in point of " attractiveness," and to make use 
of the meretricious aids of the stage, and even of the gin 
palace, in order to achieve a triumph ! And all the while 
it is to maintain that the weapons of its warfare are not 
carnal ! 

But there are deeper questions raised by all this, and 
the mere beautifulness of Rituahsm is not its principal 
feature. 

What we must lay chief stress upon, if we would do 
justice to the Ritualistic movement as expounded by its 
accredited advocates, is the teaching element in it. It 
is not a display of ecclesiastical finery, but a clothing of 
religious doctrine. Some who are counted Ritualists may 
be chargeable with nothing more serious than a love of 
functions and spectacular displays. But intelligent repre- 
sentatives of the species maintain that Ritual is far more 
than an exhibition of striking ceremonial. It is to them the 
expression of dogma, with deep roots and very appreciable 
results. 

The Main Idea Ritualism Embodies 

Hence the important point for us to determine in answer 
to the question, " What is Rituahsm ? " evidently comes 
to be — the character of the doctrine which Ritualism is 
intended to present, and to propagate in the world of 
men. 

Now, on the surface, Rituahsm is a very complex and 
even miscellaneous-looking congeries of appointments and 
ceremonies. One has only to look at the condemnatory 



in the Church of England 3 1 

judgments passed in the Court of Arches to be satisfied of 
this. Among the Ritualistic innovations pronounced 
illegal, there have been — stone altars (such as Ridley ordered 
to be " plucked down ") ; crosses attached to the Com- 
munion table ; Ughted candles, when not needed to give 
Ught, on the Communion table ; the elevation of the patten 
and cup at the Communion ; the use of incense for censing 
persons and things ; the mixing of water with the wine at 
or before the Communion celebration ; the use of vestments 
(copes, albs, stoles, dalmatics, maniples, tunics, chasubles, 
and the like) ; processions (with thurif ers, crucifers, acolytes, 
choristers, etc.) ; elevation of the offertory alms ; the use 
of wafer bread ; and the asperges, or sprinkling of water 
upon the congregation. 

Variety enough ! And yet all this miscellaneous array 
of Ritualistic paraphernalia is bound together by one 
principle. The various twigs and offshoots, with all their 
efflorescent greenery, are connected with one root. For 
Rituahsm is really the embodiment and manifestation of 
one idea — the conception and system already considered 
in these pages, viz. Sacerdotalism. 

Dramatised Tractarianism 

In EngUsh history Rituahsm was, as we have already 
seen, the outward embodiment, the dramatising, of the 
Tractarian Movement. The early Tractarians were con- 
cerned directly with doctrine, and did not concern them- 
selves about externals. But if their watchword was 
Doctrine first and Ritual afterwards, the subsequent watch- 
word came to be, Ritual in the foreground in order to in- 
culcate Doctrine — the dramatic element to the front in 
religion, in order to influence the imagination, and affect 
the heart, and through it the judgment and the will. Ritu- 
ahsm, which distinctly showed itself in the later sixties, 
has been the following up and the backing up of the earher 
Tractarian {i.e., Anglo-Cathohc, i.e., Romanising) move- 
ment. And at the core of the whole effort, whether 
" Tractarian " or " Rituahstic " be the adjective you 
apply to it in its successive phases, there is found the 
Sacerdotal idea. 



32 ^he Romanising Movement 

That this is so, plainly appears from a consideration of 
its observances and the apparatus used in their celel)ration. 
It is also made clear in the manuals published by the Ritu- 
ahstic party for the instruction of old and young. 

What Means even the Eastward Position ? 

Take such a simple observance, for example, as the 
Eastward Position (observed in more than a third of the 
churches of the Church of England). That seems a very 
innocuous ceremony on the face of it ; and no doubt a good 
many well-meaning Protestants, when they happen to 
find themselves in an Enghsh church with " high " ten- 
dencies, do " as the Romans do," without thinking of it. 
In the house of Rimmon they turn with the Rimmonites, 
headed by the officiating priest, toward the East. But 
with the informed and deliberate RituaUst even so appar- 
ently small a thing as the Eastward Position has for him 
untold significance. 

One writer. Canon MacCoU, tries to explain Protestant 
aversion to facing East, and to having the minister turn 
his back upon the people while he officiates at the Com- 
munion, by ascribing it to a feeling of wounded self-love — 
which makes the thought of self predominant and that of 
God vague and unreal. In his view, in fact, the disUke 
to Rituahsm is based on an imperfect grasp of God's omni- 
presence. But this is palpably mistaken and absurd. It 
is the RituaHst, surely, who has an imperfect grasp of God's 
omnipresence, if he fancies that God is to be sought and 
found only in the East. And as for the priest turning his 
back upon the people, that would not, in itself, be necessarily 
repugnant to the latter (for his back, if the truth is to be 
told, may sometimes be quite as pleasant to look at as his 
face). But then, it is, and is intended to be, a rituahstic 
symbol of the minister's priestly standing ; and the position 
of the " celebrant " looking East, with his back to the 
people, is regarded as a sacrificial attitude. And that 
makes all the difference. For, the main contention of the 
RituaUsts is asserted in this simple change of position. 
The ojfficiating clergyman, who turns to the East with 
his back to the congregation at the celebration of the 



in the Church of England 33 

Sacrament, whether he reaUses it fully or no — which in 
some cases he may not do — is really acting ostensibly 
in a sacerdotal capacity, and is supposed to be offering 
up as a propitiation the very body and blood of the 
Lord. 



Altar— or Table ? Sacrifice— or Supper ? 

For this reason it was— just to avoid such miscon- 
ceptions — that the word " Altar " was excluded from the 
EngUsh Church Prayer Book — in keeping with the views 
of the great and influential martyr Eidley, who said, just 
before his death : " The form of a Table shall more move 
the simple from the superstitious opinions of the Popish 
Mass into the right use of the Lord's Supper. For the use 
of an Altar is to make sacrifice upon it ; the use of a Table 
is to serve for men to eat upon." 

On the other hand, it being the very opposite of the 
intention of the Mediaeval party in the Church of England 
now to move the simple from what Ridley calls " the 
superstitious opinions of the Popish Mass," they are strong 
for the Altar as against the Table — for the " Sacrifice " 
rather than the Supper : and they are strenuous in seeking 
to adapt, so far as they dare, every part of their wor- 
ship to the Temple idea, as contrasted with that of a Church 
or Meeting-house. This appears from the accessories 
they use (vestments, incense, lights, holy water, and the 
like) ; from the functionaries they employ (thurifers, cruci- 
fers, servers, acolytes, etc.); from the ceremonies they 
perform (genuflexions, i.e., touching the ground with one 
knee, processions, prostrations, sprinkUngs, censing of 
persons and things, the use of the altar bell, elevation of 
the host, and adoration of the same). It appears even 
in the phraseology they affect (altar, celebrant, mattins. High 
Mass, evensong, and so forth). All these are devices aimed, 
and avowedly aimed, at following out the precedent of the 
Middle Ages — returning to the mediaeval pattern, restoring 
to the Church of England, as it is expressly put, " a render- 
ing of the sacred Mass, fully mediaeval in the correctness of 
its use, and more than mediaeval in the richness, costliness, 
taste, and perfection of its details." 



34 The Romanising Movement 

The Clothing of the Sacerdotal Idea 

In all this, then, as will readily be perceived, we have, 
as the distinct object, the clothing in elaborate outward 
form of the Sacerdotal idea. It would require a book, 
instead of a paper, to show how every part of such a complex 
machinery fits into, and subserves, the main design. But 
let us just look at one item in the long inventory, that we 
may illustrate by way of specimen the significance, the 
true inwardness, of the whole miscellaneous catalogue. 

The Historic Origin of ** Vestments " 

Take vestments. It is an unpardonable " departing from 
all antiquity," the Ritualists hold, to neglect the use of 
vestments ; and their use is not only ancient but richly 
emblematic. 

Well, as to their antiquity there need be little question. 
Some of them, at any rate, are far older than many Ritual- 
ists imagine. The alb, e.g,^ (Latin " white ^'), was originally 
neither more nor less than a white tunic— the ancient 
Roman camesia or chemise ; so that it may date back, 
if you like, to the time when man first became a shirt- 
wearing animal. That it has not remained all through 
the ages white, is perhaps not to be wondered at ! Then 
the suTflice (or pellice) — from the Latin superpellicum — 
was just the shirt drawn on above the fur undergarment 
worn by the barbarian invaders from the north. The 
cope was just the capa, or sleeveless waterproof cape, worn 
in wet weather by the Itahan labourer. The dalmatic 
was the undershirt without sleeves, worn in Dalrnatia 
(whence the name). The cassock was the casaca, or long 
over-all introduced from France. The chasMe was the 
casula, a slang name given by the Italian labourer to his 
coat — '' the Uttle house," as the word means : a meta- 
phoric expression akin to the use of the word " tile " when 
appHed, in not over-refined circles, to the h^t with which a 
person's head is roofed. 

So that Dean Stanley in his ''Christian Institutions" is 
quite right in maintaining that '' these garments, around 
which so much contention has been raging since the days 



in the Church of England 35 

of Bishop Latimer (who utterly refused to wear any of the 
Romish vestments), were just the ordinary garments of 
Italian labourers, which the clergy of early days wore in 
common with them. The early Benedictines, for example, 
are represented, Uke the neighbouring peasantry, in blue 
or green or black indifferently, according to the custom of 
the place and time." 

But then, by a curious process of ecclesiastical evolution, 
the robes conservatively retained, when the everyday dress 
of ordinary society had altered, came to have a peculiar 
meaning attached to them ; and churchly tradition by 
and by invested the vestments with a sanctity which nobody 
had ever dreamt of associating with them at the first. 
The Chasuble, for instance, has developed into the dis- 
tinctive robe of the sacrificing priest. It is intended to 
represent the sacrificial robe worn by the Redeemer, 
and " it has on the back a cross and^ on the front a pillar, 
to represent the cross which the Redeemer bore, and the 
pillar at which He was scourged." 

The Robed Priest Personating Christ 

In short, when the priest is arrayed in his vestments, 
he is regarded as representing, and in a sense personating, 
Christ at the Altar of Sacrifice ; and through them he is 
regarded as being the better equipped for dramatising the 
events of Calvary. Here, accordingly, is how, in one of the 
Ritualistic Manuals for children, " The St Alban's, Holborn, 
Sunday Scholars' Book," the religious significance of the 
illegal vestments is explained, for the benefit of '' the little 
lads and maidens of St Alban's Schools " : — " St Paul 
tells us that we do show the Lord's death in this Holy 
Sacrament ; therefore everything about the Altar speaks 
to us of His sufferings for us. The steps up to the Altar 
remind us of the steep way up to Mount Calvary. The 
Altar is of wood like the Cross. Tied round the neck of 
the priest is the Amice, the veil which the wicked soldiers 
threw round the Lord's face. The Alb is the white robe 
which Herod put upon Him. The Girdle and Stole remind 
us of the rope with which He was bound, and the Tassels 
of the whip which scourged Him. The Maniple upon the 



36 The Romanising Movement 

arm speaks to us of the cords which tied His hands ; the 
Chasuble, the large outer Vestment, reminds us of the 
purple robe which mocking soldiers put upon Him." 

The Feeble Defence of Vestments 

Now, some of the arguments by which Vestments are 
defended seem childish and ludicrous enough. It is not 
very convincing, e.g., to be told that the woman who 
touched the hem of Christ's garment knew that He was 
" a good man," because, unlike the Pharisees, He had his 
vestment according to rubric ! Christ certainly was no 
RituaHst. Nor is it very convincing to be told that Paul's 
request for the cloak he left at Troas was due, not to a 
natural desire to have a garment with him to keep out the 
cold, but to an anxiety to get back the Chasuble, which 
he found so necessary to keep up the Eucharist ! No, no ; 
Paul with his Troas cloak, and Peter with his fisherman's 
coat were no RituaUsts. It is neither to the Apostles nor 
to their Master that the Sacerdotalists must turn for their 
warrant, in foisting their mil-worship on the Christian 
Church. The part of honesty for them is, to confess that 
their pattern belongs to a much later date — being found 
in that medisevalism which was an un-Christian harking 
back to a system of typology done away in the crucifixion of 
the Son of God, '' once for all," on Calvary. Not in ancient 
Judaism, which served its purpose and passed away — not 
in Christ, who taught men to worship in Spirit and in 
Truth — not in any of His Apostles — not in the Church 
of the New Testament (with its two simple rites, the Sacra- 
ments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper) must the origin 
and defence of modern Ritualism be found. But — in the 
Church of Rome ! 

Revived Mediaevalism : an Unauthorised Appropriation of 
Old Roman Clothes 

That this is the case, hardly admits of serious question 
on the part of anyone who regards with open mind the facts 
of the existing situation in the Anglican Church. 

Sometimes, indeed, it is feebly argued that, though 



in the Church of England 37 

certain ceremonies happen to be in vogue among the Roman 
CathoUcs, their adoption by AngUcans is not an acceptance 
of Romanism, but only a falUng into line with the true and 
ancient Catholic usage, with which Rome, too, happens 
to be in harmony. But what is to be said about origin, 
when we find such things advocated and practised by 
professed priests or members of the Church of England 
as these — prayers to saints, and especially to the Virgin 
Mary ; the setting up of images of the Virgin and of the 
saints, and of the pictures of the so-called Stations of the 
Cross ; prayers for the dead ; the reservation of the sacra- 
ment ; consecration of palm branches on Palm Sunday, 
and the censing of them ; consecration of ashes on Ash 
Wednesday, and the rubbing of them on men's foreheads ; 
the censing of candles on Candlemas day, and the sprinkling 
of them with holy water ; the veneration of relics ; the 
judicial absolution by confessors ; the sacrament of penance 
(aided by thongs, hair-shirts, breastlets, and anklets with 
sharp prongs), the restoration of m^onasticism — and the 
hke ? When we find things Uke these not only apologised 
for, but gloried in, we have Uttle difiiculty in tracing such 
a brood to its proper mother — the " woman arrayed in 
purple, and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and 
precious stoDCS and pearls, having a golden cup in her 
hand . . . drunken with the blood of the martyrs of 
Jesus " (Rev. xvii. 4-6). 



The Deliberate Subtlety and Startling Success of the 
Romeward Movement 

But indeed the Romeward trend of the movement is 
not denied by many of the leading RituaUsts. Their 
dehberate purpose is to leaven the Church of England as 
a whole, through observances embodying doctrines the 
prevalence of which will prepare for, and lead to, corporate 
union with Rome. This explains their hatred of the 
Thirty-nine Articles, of which, because of their Protestant 
character, they sometimes speak spitefully as "the forty 
stripes save one," It explains, too, the eager way in which 
they snatch at every phrase in the Prayer Book and its 



38 The Roma?iising Movement 

rubrics that can by any possibility be construed into con- 
formity with Eomish teaching and practice. 

Their working philosophy has been thus expressed : 
" The experience of the eighteenth century shows that it is 
impossible to preserve the Catholic faith, excepting by 
Catholic ritual : the experience of the nineteenth century 
equally makes manifest the fact that the revival of the 
Catholic faith must be accomphshed by the revival of 
Catholic ritual — and, still more, that the surest way to 
teach the Catholic faith is by Cathohc ritual " (Blenkinsopp). 
And the process recommended is — "Let a gradual change be 
brought in : and that which began as an occasional luxury 
will soon be felt as a regular want." A pohcy which has 
had large and lamentable result! 

The late Cardinal of Westminster,- Cardinal Vaughan, 
boasted, no doubt with a spice of pardonable exaggeration : 

" The doctrines of the (R.) Cathohc Church, which had 
been rejected and condemned as blasphemous, superstitious, 
and fond inventions, have been re-examined and taken 
back, one by one, until the Thirty-nine Articles have been 
banished and buried as a rule of faith. The Real Presence, 
the sacrifice of the mass, offered for the hving and the dead 
— sometimes even in Latin — not infrequent reservation 
of the sacrament, regular auricular confession, extreme 
unction, purgatory, prayers for the dead, devotions to 
Our Lady, to her immaculate conception, the use of the 
rosary and the invocation of saints, are doctrines taught 
and accepted with a growing desire and rehsh for them in 
the Church of England. A cehbate clergy, the institution 
of monks and nuns under vows, retreats for clergy, missions 
for the people, fasting and other penitential exercises — 
candles, lamps, incense, crucifixes, images of the Blessed 
Virgin and the saints held in honour, stations of the cross, 
cassocks, cottas, Roman collars, birettas, copes, dalmatics, 
vestments, mitres, croziers, the adoption of an ornate 
Cathohc ritual, and now recently an elaborate display of 
the whole ceremonial of the Cathohc Pontifical — all this 
speaks of a change and a movement towards the Church 
that would have appeared absolutely incredible at the 
beginning of this \i.e., the nineteenth] century." 



■' in the Church of England 39 

The most Diligent of Prelates 

Verily there is too much truth in old Hugh Latimer's 
pointed saying : " The most diligent prelate in all England 
is the devil. He is never out of his diocese. His office is, 
to hinder religion, to maintain superstition, to set up idolatry. 
Where the devil is resident and hath his plough going, then 
away with books, and up with candles ; away with Bibles, 
and up with beads ; away with the light of the Gospel, and up 
with the light of candies, yea at noonday ! " 

What is to be done with Ritualism ? 

And now, in presence of what Ritualism is, and is doing, 
the question arises^ — What is to be done with Ritualism ? 
The one worthy answer is — let it be suppressed, by every 
legitimate and available means ! As regards the English 
Church, it is an EstabUshed Church, and office in it has 
been ofetained, and is retained, on certain terms. Let it 
be insisted that the Ritualistic clergy shall be true to the 
terms of their contract ! Or else let them be sent else- 
where, outside the bounds of the Establishment ! Let 
them be sent somewhere, anywhere — where, at their own 
cost and on their own responsibility, it will be open to 
them to ventilate freely their opinions, and either to join 
Rome or to masquerade Rome, as they may in their wisdom 
prefer. More power to those bishops who^ are minded to 
put down Romanising practices within their dioceses ! 
And more power to all our politicians of whatever party, 
who, when these war times are past, may be prepared to 
initiate legislation which will make the process of bringing 
dehnquent clergy to book far more simple and less costly 
than it has been in the past. 

The Effectual Remedy 

But the law can provide only a very partial remedy. 
It is to the Gospel, rather, that we must look, as the effectual 
means for the staying of this plague. All lovers of Christ 
and of their country may Vv'ell unite in the endeavour to 
spread a wholesome pubhc opinion on this whole subject, 
and to bring back those who have wandered from the 



40 The Romanising Movement 

simplicity that is in Christ. And, since the very spirit- 
uality and freedom of the Gospel is at stake, these should 
also unite in fervent prayer to Him who can enUghten the 
minds and direct the hearts of men, that on all bishops and 
curates, and on the whole body of the people of the Church 
of England, the Spirit of God may be so poured out as to 
bring back the victory to truth, and to make that Church 
— not what some would wish to make it, a seed-plot of 
error — but more truly than ever what it was fondly 
called in other days : '' The greatest Bulwark of the 
Eeformation.'* 

" Oh ! how iinhke the complex works of man, 
Heaven's easy, artless, unencumbered plan : 
No meretricious graces to beguile, 
No clustering ornaments to clog the pile ; 
Inscribed above the portal from afar, 
Conspicuous as the brightness of a star, 
Legible only by the light they give. 
Stand the soul- quickening words — Believe and Uve ! " 

William Cotvper. 



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Shadow of the Jesuit Captives in Fortress of Despair 
Protestant Recitations for the Young 



THREEPENCE EACH 



Anti= Ritualism. 

Bible and the Church. Dr Wright. 

Protestant Catechism. Blakeney. 

The Empire's Greatest Dangler. 

Light, Liberty and Truth. 

Clear Statements on Controversial 

Questions. Rev. Innes B. Wane. 
More Victims of the Priest. 
Great Truths 5imply Explained. By Rev. 

St Clair Tisdall. D.D. 
Old Paths. By Rev. T. Connellan. 



^Church Questions. Gilbert Karney. 
rRome Underground. 
The Real Presence. By Rev. Werner 

So AMES, M.A. 

H(tor the Church. (Part 1 1, of Homilies.) 

A«uycular Confession. 

Landmarks* By Rev. T. Connellan. 

Victims of the Priest. 

Great Harlot on the Seven Hills. By 

Albert Close. 
The Eucharist. By Rev. T. Connellan. 



SIXPENCE EACH. (Postag^e Sd. Extra) 



Great Truths Simply Explained. By Rev. 

St Clair Tisdall. Cloth. 
Jesuits* Sedition and Inhumanity. 
Convent Pestilence. Contains Photographs 

of Nuns who never leave their Convents. 
Kensit Crusade Battle Hymns, with Music. 
Outlines of Protestant Missions. 
History of the Reformation. By Professor 

Wit hero. 
Holy Communion. 
Limerick Medical Missions, History of. 

By Dr Lonc;. 
Churchman's Guide on Present-day 

Questions. By Rev. R. B. Girdlestone, 

M.A. 



Churchman's A. B.C. 

Church Questions. Rev. Gilbert Karney. 

Confirmation. By Dyson Hague. 

Is there a God? Lectures on Scepticism. 

By Vallance Cook. 
Woman of Babylon. By Joseph Hocking. 
Almost a Nun. By J. McNair Wright. 
Life of a Carmelite Nun. Illustrated. 
Confessional in English Church. By A. R. 

BUCKLANI). 

Defeat of Spanish Armada. By Albert 

Close. 
Hear the Other Side. By Rev. T. 
Connellan. 



ONE SHILLING EACH. 

Defeat of Spanish Armada. By A. Close. 
Cloth. 

Confessional in English Church. (Buck- 
land.) 

Life of John Kensit (20th Century Martyr). 
Cloth. 



(Postag^e 4ci. Extra) 

Nunnery Life in Church of England. 

(-^i^ter Agnes.) 
Priests and People in Ireland. McCarthy, 
Intolerance in Ireland. By " Irishman." 



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